


but there’s nothing to be afraid of (even when the night changes)

by boltguiding (mayerwien)



Category: One Direction (Band), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Night Vale, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 07:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11595729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/boltguiding
Summary: Zayn is a boy without a past, and Louis is a boy without a future.Or at least, that is what the summary of this storywouldsay, if this were a young adult novel. But since this story contains considerably less crying than a young adult novel does (although it does contain about the same amount of blood), this is what the summary says instead:There will be radio silences. There will be awkward silences. There will be mixtapes, and kittens, and vague memories of horrific team-building exercises. But there will be a happy ending, as long as no one does anything stupid, like try to enter the Dog Park. (Also, we are all being watched as we browse this website. Yes, even you.)(or, the one where Louis is the longest-surviving intern at Night Vale Radio and Zayn is a former Strex employee with PTSD.)





	but there’s nothing to be afraid of (even when the night changes)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [1D_Hiatus_Prompt_Meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/1D_Hiatus_Prompt_Meme) collection. 



> I claimed this for the hiatus challenge and was working on it for SO LONG but I never managed to finish it I'm so sorry ;_____; but I still love the premise and am very fond of what I came up with for it, so here's a largish bit of it. Might go back to it someday, who knows!!!!!
> 
> Original prompt: “Louis is the longest living Intern under Cecil, which gives him Points with Management. Zayn is a Strex deserter from Desert Bluffs around the time that they took over the town and he's been recovering in the Cecilos household since. Through a series of Family Dinners, Louis and Zayn become close friends and Louis becomes vital to help Zayn recover from Strex.”
> 
> Slight AU wherein things have gone right back to normal after the Strex takedown, i.e. Carlos doesn’t get trapped in the otherworld desert for an ungodly period of time.

so what, you think this is usual

strange moon, strange land, strange man

\- Belly, “Low Red Moon”

 

\--

 

_Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. Keep your enemies so close that you enfold them in a tight and loving embrace, and that as you press them ever nearer to your chest, their skin becomes your skin, their bones become your bones, and you feel any memory or sense of self you ever had slowly drain away as you and your enemies coalesce into a single, bonded entity for all of eternity._

_Welcome to Night Vale._

_Listeners, I know it is not good radio etiquette to begin a broadcast with an anecdote from one’s personal life, but I feel that this_ particular _anecdote is a newsworthy item. You see, yesterday, Carlos and I were walking—hand in hand, as boyfriends do—taking a romantic stroll through the vast, flat, and seemingly endless expanse of the Empty Desert, when to our surprise, we met a young teenage boy. By “met” in this case, I mean “tripped over,” as the boy was lying on the ground in the fetal position; and in my defense, it was getting dark._

 _I thought this strange boy might just have been a lost backpacker, but Carlos—who is as brilliant as he is beautiful—deduced from the boy’s bloodstained lapels and vacant, soulless stare that he was, in fact, a survivor of Night Vale’s uprising against the malevolent private corporation formerly known as StrexCorp Synernists Inc. The latter of which, of course, has since been legally acquired by Erika, the newly wealthy—ahem—quote-unquote_ angel.

_I know, I know. Erika’s word, not mine._

_Anyway, after taking him home and serving him a soothing dinner of pumpkin soup and homemade crostini, we learned that the poor soul’s name is Zayn, and that he has little recollection of our gruesome but ultimately successful revolt—and worse, that he has nowhere to go in this wide and confusing world. So for now, we have put him up in our apartment. If you happen to meet Zayn out on the street, do not be alarmed; Carlos has performed all the usual tests, and he assures me that as far as he can tell, the boy is perfectly safe, hypoallergenic, and paraben-free._

_All I ask is that if you choose to greet Zayn in the traditional Night Vale manner of shouting “Interloper! Interloper!” while waving a blunt household object above your head, you do so in a_ gentle, sensitive _manner. Zayn is very shy, and startles easily._

 _Now, in other news, John Peters—you know, the farmer?—has recently been seen walking up and down the aisles of the Ralphs carrying a large sack of oranges;_ none _of which are the color orange, or in fact any identifiable color at all..._

 

\--

 

Louis pays a lot of attention to people’s voices.

Being an intern at the Night Vale Community Radio station perhaps has something to do with it; his entire job revolves around sound, and he’s listened to hundreds, maybe thousands, of recordings since he started, dating all the way back to before Leonard Burton’s time. He’s also long since been able to identify exactly which of the other interns is disappearing into a portal in the wall, or getting carried away by pterodactyls, by the sounds of their agonized, drawn-out screams alone. Sometimes when he’s out in public, riding the bus or lining up for a ticket at the movie theater, he closes his eyes and just listens to the people around him talking: the rise and fall of their conversations, the awkward jokes that fall flat and the laughter that comes just three seconds too late.

Louis has found that, more often than not, he tends to make first impressions of people based on the way their voices sound. His friend Harry, for instance, who recently got a job at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, has a deep and scratchy baritone that sounds like it’s reaching down to the base of your spine to get at that one itchy spot for you (you know, the annoying one that just keeps moving around and around instead of actually going away). It drew Louis to Harry the second they met, and based on the number of love letters the Sheriff’s Secret Police has to screen before dropping them off at Harry’s house every week, he’s not the only one. Harry can sing, too, and Louis sometimes visits the diner just to listen to him belt out “Midnight Train to Georgia” along with the jukebox while he shovels pancakes off the griddle and beats time with the spatula. On the other hand, Steve Carlsberg, who is the current secretary for the Night Vale PTA, has a voice that doesn’t sound like anything but...Steve Carlsberg, really, even when he’s doing a Daffy Duck impression, and that’s probably why Louis has never respected him or his views on politics very much.

Louis’ boss at the radio station, Cecil, has a resonant, even voice, and he pronounces words as though he believes each and every word is special, and has a lot of potential, and really shouldn’t listen to what the other words are saying about it on the playground. Cecil’s voice only changes when he’s talking to his boyfriend, Carlos the scientist; it softens around the edges, and sometimes he goes up an octave or two, and stammers a little, and it’s kind of cute. (Carlos’ voice, notably, is light and a little rough, with vanilla bean notes and just a hint of paprika.)

Cecil’s calming tones are what inspired Louis to want to become a radio host someday. He doesn’t think he could do what Cecil does, be The Voice of Night Vale; but he thinks he would be good at interviewing people, or just introducing the Top 40 hits. Louis isn’t exactly happy with the sound of his _own_ voice, which is just a little too high, and when he listens to it played back sounds like the noise a chalkboard would make as it shrank away from an approaching fingernail in fear—but he supposes he’s learned to accept it, after having lived with it for so long.

The strange boy who turned up in the Empty Desert, now, has barely said five words since he arrived. But from what Louis’ heard, his voice is soft like he doesn’t want to trouble anyone with it, like a sneak down the stairs for the cookie jar at midnight—but also staccatoed like a bad radio transmission, with consonants overlapping or running into each other or vowels disappearing altogether.

It’s a voice unlike anything he’s heard before, and as a result, Louis isn’t quite sure how he feels about the strange boy. Plus, he’s from Strex, and though he _claims_ he left them voluntarily, Louis has too many painful memories of playing volleyball at the Company Picnic of Indeterminate Length to be a hundred percent accepting. But Carlos and Cecil seem to think the strange boy is okay, and everybody trusts Carlos’ judgement, because he’s a scientist.

As to the reason Cecil’s brought the strange boy along to the radio station today, he explained to Louis earlier, “He’s only really comfortable around Carlos or me, but he doesn’t like to be left alone. He’s been through a lot—well, not that he can remember what it is he’s been through, but it must have been _terrible_ for him. So while I’m doing the show, just make sure he’s okay and doesn’t touch anything that might get him in trouble with Station Management.”

Which is why at present, the strange boy is sitting on the floor of the archive room, between a filing cabinet and a desk, with his knees pulled close to his chest and his arms locked around them; while Louis is kneeling in front of an open drawer of cassette tapes.

Part of Louis’ job as an intern is sorting all the tapes that are here in the archive. No matter how often he rearranges them properly (by color, of course, from darkest to lightest, and then alphabetically by the name of the firstborn child of the head of each cassette tape brand’s manufacturing company), they somehow always manage to get mixed up again. Sometimes new tapes appear, too, ones with labels reading _Do Not Listen,_ or, _Sure, Go Ahead, Listen, It’s Your Funeral,_ or, _This Is Not A Cassette Tape, This Is A Loaf Of Banana Bread That Merely Bears An Uncanny Physical Resemblance To A Cassette Tape._ (Once, out of curiosity, Louis had put one of these tapes, simply labeled _June 1964,_ into his Walkman to test it. He’d awoken eight days later on the floor of one of the middle school classrooms, dressed in a lobster costume, with no recollection of anything that had transpired. He’s been a lot more careful since then.)

Although Cecil’s broadcast can be heard even all the way in here, the silence in the room is much louder, and Louis hates that. Glancing over at the strange boy— _Zayn_ —Louis wishes he’d say something, instead of just sitting there like that, with the blood matting his hair, and staring.

Staring at _him._

“What,” Louis says.

Zayn just blinks back, looking confused. He has thick eyelashes, Louis notices, so thick that there are probably people out there who’d love to harvest them for paintbrushes—large dark eyes just shy of voids, and hollows in his cheeks that the shadows cast by the filing cabinet are deepening. He’s slender and beautiful and sad, like some kind of willow tree, or a flamingo that’s listened to too much Three Days Grace, and it actually hurts a little to look at him.

“Look, you don’t have to be on the floor just ‘cause I’m on the floor,” Louis says. “There’s a chair over there.”

Zayn shakes his head.

“You hungry? I could get you something from the vending machine.”

Zayn shakes his head again.

“Then what’re you _starin’_ at me for?”

Zayn bites the inside of his cheek and looks down at his lap.

Louis rolls his eyes. Obviously there’s no point in trying to make conversation with him. He can hear the strains of the weather coming in through the half-open door, so he sings along softly as he gets back to work, slotting a tape marked _Westlife_ in between the tapes labeled _The Wanted (No Seriously, The Government Is After Us, Don’t Tell Them Where We Are)_ and _5SOS SOS SOS ABORT MISSION THIS IS NOT A DRILL REPEAT ABORT._ There’s only one light bulb in here, and it flickers on and off every now and then, so Louis has to squint to make out the print on the spines of the plastic cases.

Then, unexpectedly, Zayn says in a soft voice, “The cats.”

Louis looks up. “What?”

“The cats,” Zayn says more clearly, lifting his chin a little. “In the bathroom... What’re their names?”

“Oh. Erm—the one by the sink, that’s Khoshekh, the dad. The kitten beside the first toilet stall is Mixtape, and Larry Leroy named the one near the window Larry Leroy. I don’t know if Cecil has names for the others.”

“We didn’t have cats,” Zayn murmurs. He’s tracing circles on the back of his own hand with one finger. “Just StrexPets. And they _bit.”_

“Well, you can pet these cats if you want, they’ve never bitten anyone. But whatever you do, _don’t_ try and take a photo of them,” Louis tells him.

“Why not?”

“There won’t be enough of you left to put a filter on the photo afterwards.”

To Louis’ surprise, a smile quirks at the edge of Zayn’s mouth. He takes it as encouragement to keep talking. “By the way, I’m Louis, in case Cecil didn’t tell you,” he adds, pushing the drawer shut and reaching up for the next one.

Slowly, Zayn starts to lower his knees. “Louis,” he repeats quietly, his voice patting down the vowels, ending the last syllable in an exhale.

Just then, a scream erupts from the break room, followed by a long, rattling hiss, and Louis sighs. “Intern Jonelle,” he says, unfolding his legs from beneath him as he starts to get up. “Be right back, I’ve just got to slip a note under Cecil’s do—”

Zayn lurches forward so fast that Louis nearly screams himself. His fingers close tightly around the edge of Louis’ sleeve like claws, something wild in his eyes—but he’s completely silent, his gaze not leaving Louis’ face.

“Let me _up,_ you idiot,” Louis says irritably, and then feels a little bad when he sees Zayn’s expression. Just a little. “Oh, all right, you can come with me, but keep your arms in, okay?” Getting to his feet, he brushes off the seat of his jeans, opens the creaking door, and steps out, with Zayn stumbling closely after him.

It’s a bit of a squeeze through the darkened corridor that winds through the center of the station. The passageway is already pretty tight to begin with, but there’s also a lot of old, unidentifiable equipment stacked up along one wall that they’re not allowed to move, for fear there will be Consequences—a Station-wide Internal Memo, for instance, and nobody wants one of _those_ again, not after what happened to Geoffrey when he stole a box of paperclips last June.

Zayn’s got a good couple of inches of height on Louis, but he’s hunched over, making himself small. In the narrow space, Louis is so distracted by the sound of Zayn’s breathing—and the _feel_ of Zayn’s breathing, for that matter, warm on the back of his neck—that he almost forgets to pick up the broken chair leg he always carries around with him. Needy new boy or no, he isn’t about to break his record for longest-surviving intern now.

 

\--

_...and though the bodies covered the ground, and all the trees of the Ancient Wood were ablaze, the battle was far from over._

_At that moment, a lone horse-and-rider appeared on the horizon, silhouetted by the crimson light of the planet’s twin suns, and came charging across the vast expanse of the valley. All who saw her dropped their spears and fell, weeping, to their knees—for it was! It was Xandra El-Kator, wielder of the Obsidian Sword of Legitimacy, and the one known throughout the land as “The Rabid Anglerfish.”_

_Swiftly, the Overlady’s Champion struck a path through the enemy forces like a farmer reaping sorghum, howling the victory song of her mother’s mother’s house. But alas, her deadly dance was cut short by the ghastly legion of Skeletal Riders that, unbeknownst to her, had crested the hill to the south. One by one, they raised their crossbows and fired arrows into her mount’s knees—and as the mare toppled to the grass, they descended upon her._

_“I shall not be overcome,” Xandra vowed, shaking a fist at the heavens, even as the Riders bound her ankles and dragged her into one of the dreaded Collection Caravans, adorned with their black ribbons and their thousands of tinkling, tinkling silver bells. “WE shall not be overcome!”_

_This has been traffic._

\--

 

Louis lives alone, in a third-floor apartment much like any other, on a street in Night Vale much like any other, with a steaming open manhole that possibly leads down to the gates of the underworld much like any other. The apartment is cramped and a little mildewy and not always very clean, and his sofa is worn down in places it has no reason to be worn down in, and he microwaves most of his meals because he’s pretty sure the rest of the kitchen is broken—but it’s his, and he’s fiercely proud of being able to pay his own rent and no longer having his mum call every night just to make sure he’s still alive.

The only thing he hates about it, really, is the walls; they’re a drab shade of yellowish-gray not unlike that crayon Crayola makes called Lifelong Regret, and whenever he looks at them, they depress him so much that he can’t even work up the energy to go out and buy new paint to repaint them with. (He _did_ buy a framed photograph of a window to hang up, in the hopes that it would brighten the place up a bit, but so far it hasn’t made much of a difference.)

On this particular dusty Saturday afternoon, Louis is in the middle of playing air-guitar along to The Who while sloppily folding his laundry, which is still a little damp but hot from the dryer in the basement, when his cellphone rings. Glancing at the caller ID, he raises his eyebrows and turns the radio down. “Hey, Cecil,” he says into the phone once he’s answered.

“Hello, Louis,” Cecil replies. Even over the phone, Louis can hear the faint click of him pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m very sorry to call you on a weekend, and for a non-work-related reason. I know you have your own life, however much it is possible for any of us to really _own_ anything...”

“No, no, s’all right.” Louis eases onto the sofa, wincing as he feels the cushion give way to the springs underneath. “What’s up?”

“Well, you see, Carlos is still at the lab, and I’ve just realized we’re out of the banana-pineapple yogurt I need for tonight’s dinner, so I need to pop out to Whole Foods to make a quick grocery run. But I find myself physically unable to leave Zayn here alone, and I can’t seem to take him with me, either. Right now, he is standing frozen in the middle of the living room, staring at the clipboards and seismograms Carlos has left strewn across the coffee table. He also appears to be mouthing the word _‘paperwork’_ repeatedly. I am not entirely sure why.”

“That sounds fairly disturbing, Cecil, but...I’m not sure what any of this has to do with me.”

“Since you’ve already gotten to know Zayn, I was hoping you could come over for a little while and stay with him, just until I get back? He does seem to like you; in fact, he asked me about you yesterday.”

“He did?” Louis feels his heartbeat speed up a little, and then wonders why.

“Yes, he asked me, _‘Is Louis a permanent employee, or is he working on a contractual basis?’_ So I said, _‘Neither, he’s an intern,’_ and he said, _‘Oh,’_ at which point he resumed cleaning underneath the Blu-Ray cabinet with a lint roller. Also, if it helps, I don’t think this will put you out of your way too much, since your building _is_ right next door to ours.”

“It _is?”_ Louis asks, surprised. “How narratively convenient.”

“Indeed,” Cecil agrees cheerfully. “Anyway, I really hate to ask, but would you do me this huge favor, just for an hour or two? Oh dear, now he’s wrapping himself in the living room curtains, and I—Zayn? _Zayn, don’t do that, you’ll suffocate, and I didn’t get far enough in the first aid module in high school to know how to help you if that happens—”_

“I’ll be there in five,” Louis says hurriedly, and hangs up.

So now he supposes he’s off to babysit the strange boy who turned up in the Empty Desert. It’s by no means the hardest thing he’s done as an intern (that position, unfortunately, belongs to the one time Cecil asked him to help moderate his Finnegan’s Wake prompt meme challenge on Livejournal). Part of him hopes this will give him points towards regularization, or a promotion of some sort—but part of him is just willing to do it because, well, he likes Cecil and Carlos, the new addition to their household notwithstanding.

Louis jogs up the front steps of the apartment building next door and finds their doorbell easily. The label next to it has _“Cecil Palmer”_ printed on it in Futura; the handwritten addition underneath it reads _“and Carlos the Scientist”_ in purple ink, and is surrounded by little hearts. After he gets buzzed in, Louis walks up, hopping over the giant ragged hole in the staircase, and tentatively pushes open the door to apartment 2Ñ.

The first thing he sees is Cecil kneeling next to the curtain of the living room window, looking despairing. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, showing all his forearm tattoos, and his glasses have slid down to the end of his nose. “Zayn, I told you, no one’s asking you to file _anything,_ you’re not in the office anym—Oh, look, Louis’ here.” The relief in Cecil’s tone is evident as he sits back on his haunches and smiles up at Louis.

“Just talk to him for a while until he comes out, sometimes he just needs that,” Cecil whispers, before standing up and calling, “I’m going out now, Zayn. Louis will take care of you until I get back, and I’ll try very hard not to get pulled over by the semaphore traffic cops so I can be back _soon,_ I promise.” Even though Cecil’s slowly edging out the door, he keeps glancing back over his shoulder, until Louis makes a shooing motion and closes the door after him.

Folding his arms, Louis turns around and looks down at the curtain. “All right. What seems to be the problem?”

The curtain moves, and a pair of soft, dark eyes becomes visible within the folds. “I _really_ don’t have to do any paperwork?” Zayn asks, his voice muffled and uncertain.

“Nope.”

“Not even reorganize the inbox?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What...’m I supposed to do, then?”

Louis considers. Right now, Zayn would probably benefit most from a good wash and a change of clothes. The blood is starting to smell something awful. “You got any spare things to change into?” he asks. Zayn just shakes his head. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll turn the heater on, and while you get the water in the bath running, I’ll go back to my apartment, get you some new clothes, be back in a tick.”

As he says it, Louis is already raising his hands, in case Zayn makes a grab for him again. But he doesn’t this time—just looks at him, the way your dog might look at you if you’d told it you had a big surprise for it, then brought it to the parlor and had all its hair shaved off, brought it to the vet to be neutered, and then abandoned it at the shelter all on the same day (which also happened to be its _birthday,_ you monster). This is probably what Cecil meant about being physically unable to leave Zayn home alone.

“Fuck it, I can’t be bothered with this,” Louis groans. He stomps over to the stereo and flips through the shoebox beside it that holds Cecil’s music collection. “Look, here, I’ll put on some music, _look,”_ he says, holding up a random tape in demonstration and sliding it carefully into the cassette deck.

As Patti Page’s crackly warble starts to float out of the speakers, the curtain moves back a little further. Now Louis can see the rest of Zayn; he’s sitting on the floor in the same knees-to-chest position he’d been in at the studio, but his head is fully raised now, and he appears to be listening intently to the music.

“There. Are we good now?” Louis asks.

Slowly, Zayn nods.

“Good,” Louis says, and then lets himself out of the apartment before he can change his mind.

He practically _runs_ home and flings open his closet. He surprises himself by taking a little time to think about what Zayn would be most comfortable in (and, if he’s being completely honest with himself, what he’d look _good_ in, because underneath all the layers of gore-stained corporate wear he’s probably really fit), and finally grabs a couple of soft T-shirts and a few pairs of jeans, stuffing them into a plastic bag.

Louis is just opening the door to Cecil’s apartment again when he hears Zayn yelp from inside, down the hall. He’s in the doorway of the bathroom in a second, taking in the whole scene—the water streaming into the bathtub, Zayn’s blazer and dress shirt crumpled on the floor, Zayn himself with his back up against the wall as he stares at the mirror in horror.

“What? What is it?” Louis barks. (There’s some kind of tiny happy dance going on in the back of his mind because he was totally right about Zayn being really fit, but Louis firmly tells himself he’ll join that party later.) “What happened?”

Shivering a little, Zayn manages, “Behind me in the mirror, there was...there was an old woman, but she’d not got any eyes, or...”

Louis sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Of course there was, that’s the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home,” he says.

“But what...what was she _doing_ in here?”

“Probably just putting conditioner in the shampoo bottle and dish soap in the conditioner bottle. Look, are you going to be able to wash your hair by yourself, or do I have to do it for you?”

“’M not a _baby,”_ Zayn mutters darkly, and Louis is almost happy about that because it’s the first time he’s seen any emotion on Zayn’s face other than abject terror.

Louis just holds the plastic bag out, and Zayn takes it, and Louis goes out to sit on the sofa. It’s a lot nicer than his own sofa, roomy and plush and covered in smooth black velvet, and he allows himself to feel slightly envious of it before he decides he might as well enjoy it while he’s here. So he picks out another random cassette and puts it on, something drawly and twangy, and he tips his head back and closes his eyes, trying to block out the sounds of running water coming from the bathroom.

When Zayn emerges half an hour later, it’s in a cloud of steam that smells fairly pink, and his towel is slung around his shoulders. It’s a little weird for Louis, seeing his old Black Sabbath shirt on him; Zayn’s skinnier than Louis is, so he’s half-drowning in it, but oddly it suits him. Instead of sitting on the sofa beside Louis, Zayn sinks onto the carpet, legs crossed, hands on his ankles; then looks up at Louis expectantly, as if waiting for his approval. Now that he’s freshly washed, he looks less haunted somehow—almost like a little boy, which is probably why what Louis asks what he does next. “Zayn? How old are you?”

Zayn sucks his breath in. “According to the StrexCorp employee database, I was born on the twelfth of January nineteen-ninety three,” he recites. “Employee birthdays are important to Strex, because without births, there would be no employees, and without employees, there would be no output.”

At the mention of Strex, Louis resists the urge to shudder visibly, but he definitely shudders internally. _So we’re about the same age,_ he thinks—but aloud he asks, “Do you _seriously_ always talk like that?” in an incredulous tone. “Because I mean, if you do, then I’m actually thankful you’re quiet most of the time.”

Zayn shrugs. “Don’t remember anything about my life outside of Strex, really. Or if I even had one.” He pauses, chewing on his bottom lip a little. “They did have nice birthday parties in the office, though. You got a cupcake and your name on the bulletin board, and Human Resources always sent you an e-mail with _‘Many Happy (Tax) Returns!’_ in those animated glitter letters. That was nice.”

“Hang on, hang on. You don’t remember life outside of Strex? At all?” Louis makes a face. “What, did you _actually_ live in your cubicle or something?”

“I did a lot of overtime,” Zayn replies simply.

Louis stares at him for a second, then slowly slides off the sofa, landing on the floor beside Zayn. “Okay, well,” he says in a brisk tone. “Until Cecil and Carlos get home, why not let’s do something _fun,_ hmm? Take your mind off Str—any stressful things you might be thinkin’ about,” he catches himself.

So they do. They watch a little TV, but nothing’s on except yet another rerun of the twelfth Indiana Jones movie, _Journey to the Final Empire of the Tribe of the Cursed Ziggurat of the Blood Moon—_ so instead they play a couple games of chess with the set on the coffee table (Zayn knows a different variant, one that, oddly, _doesn’t_ have the rule about swallowing all the chess pieces that your opponent captures from you, but Louis picks up his version fast enough).

Just to further combat the uncomfortable silence, Louis talks the whole time. He talks about Night Vale, and his job at the radio station, and how impossible it is to get a reservation at that fancy restaurant, Tourniquet, which he’s never eaten at but heard does a really good molecular asparagus frittata—and even though Zayn never responds, he’s clearly listening. Occasionally, he even cracks a smile. Then Louis finds a pen and a pile of old flyers from Big Rico’s lying by the phone, so after their fifth game of chess, which ends in an unfortunate coup d’état, he shows Zayn how to play Pictionary.

Zayn turns out to be _terrible_ at this game, mainly due to the way he keeps drawing flowcharts and bar graphs instead of actual guessable nouns. Louis, on the other hand, is pretty shit at drawing, but even so, Zayn appears to be fascinated by his small doodles of Yorkshire terriers and the fake moon landing, and doesn’t seem to have noticed that it’s gone six and the sun is fast setting.

By this point, the cassette in the stereo has auto-reversed to side B, and Louis’ legs have started to cramp. “Budge over a bit, would you, love?” he says to Zayn, shifting slightly so he can stretch his calves.

Louis calls everybody _love_ purely out of habit, but Zayn looks up suddenly at the sound of the word like a startled rabbit. He looks so out of sorts that Louis is about to—apologize, or something, he’s not really sure—but just then a key turns in the lock of the front door, and Cecil and Carlos enter, carrying a grocery bag and a plastic electronic keyboard respectively.

“I am _so_ sorry I was late getting back,” Cecil says mournfully, as Carlos carefully sweeps aside the decorative glass paperweights and nutmeg-scented candles on the end table to make room for the keyboard. “The power at Whole Foods went out all of a sudden, and the cashiers couldn’t scan any of the barcodes, so they asked everybody in the store to sacrifice all their electronic devices so they could bring the power back for a few minutes, and I couldn’t call to tell you what had happened because I had to throw my phone onto the offering pyre. Oh, it was _chaos._ And on top of all that, they were _completely_ out of banana-pineapple yogurt, so I had to settle for peach-pomegranate.”

“We were fine,” Zayn says, and Louis looks sideways at him, surprised.

“Louis, you’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?” Carlos asks, shrugging off his white lab coat and hanging it up by the door, exchanging it for the informal lime-green lab coat he sometimes wears around town.

“No, it’s okay,” Louis begins to say, but Carlos immediately puts a fourth plate down on the table, so he can’t argue any further. Humming to himself, Cecil pulls down the oven door and slides a casserole dish out onto the kitchen counter, proceeding to upend his tub of yogurt over it. Even Zayn seems to know what to do here—he lays down a set of utensils on top of each napkin, and gets out a couple of wooden trivets from a drawer for the serving plates. It’s all very proper and civilized. Louis isn’t used to this.

Louis doesn’t know where he should sit, either, so he hangs back until the rest of them have taken their places at the table, and that’s how he winds up sitting beside Zayn. He pointedly keeps his elbows out while he’s slicing his scoop of casserole, so Zayn will remember he’s there and not do anything stupid like accidentally bump elbows with him, or accidentally brush his hand as he’s reaching for the garlic bread.

Because that would be stupid. Obviously.

“So, how’s work at the lab going?” Cecil asks, tapping the pepper flake shaker over his plate, then holding his hand out to Carlos for the rainbow sprinkles shaker.

“Same old, same old. We detected some kind of anomaly on our radar this morning, originating from somewhere in the downtown area. It’s the pulsating kind. We kept trying to time the intervals between spikes before we remembered clocks don’t work in Night Vale, so we ended up counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi instead.” Carlos has tired eyes, but he smiles as he swirls his glass of cabernet. “How about you, Louis? Cecil not working you too hard, I hope?”

Louis struggles to swallow his mouthful of casserole before responding quickly, “No! God, no. I love it. I mean, I’ve always wanted to work in radio, so...”

“Louis is one of the best interns we’ve ever had,” Cecil says proudly. “He’s survived all his field assignments so far without losing a single limb or vital organ, he gets the vending machine to work when no one else can, _and_ he can rap all of ‘Guns and Ships’ from _Hamilton._ ”

“Oh, stop it,” Louis says playfully, rolling his eyes, but secretly he’s thrilled at being called _one of the best interns we’ve ever had._ So he decides to tell a funny story from last week, about when he’d gone to investigate the strange noises coming from the abandoned gas station on Oxford Street. He starts out matter-of-factly, but then gets a bit carried away and starts doing all the voices, waving his arms around bellowing in imitation of the gas station attendant who shouldn’t have been there but was definitely there, and who also looked remarkably like Gregory Peck.

Although Cecil’s heard this story from Louis before, he still laughs, clearly pronouncing every _ha,_ and Carlos chuckles into his wineglass. And then _Zayn_ laughs, a soft, kind of hiccupy sound, and his face just opens up with ease, like a ribcage during heart surgery. And Louis forgets how the ending to his own story goes and just _stares,_ because it’s—it’s...

(He’s trying not to let himself think _adorable,_ but it’s too late. It’s too late, it’s already there, the word’s already scrolling across the billboard at the forefront of his brain.)

Adorable.

(Damn.)

Cecil looks across the table at Zayn, then at Carlos, and finally at Louis, his eyes glowing with affection. Or perhaps they’re just glowing—it’s hard to tell sometimes, with Cecil. “We should do this again,” he says brightly.

“Yes, we should,” Carlos agrees. “Louis, you’re welcome for dinner here anytime.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything; just reaches over to take Louis’ empty plate. But he smiles shyly at Louis when he does, just for a second, before turning away to put the dishes in the sink.

Louis stares down at his empty placemat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” he says softly.

“Wonderful,” says the Faceless Old Woman. “Next time, I’ll make dessert.”

 

\--

 

 _...and that is why you should never,_ ever, _wait less than an hour, but_ more _than an hour and fifteen minutes, before swimming._

_Listeners, exciting news! The renovations on Aditya’s Art Supply Shop in downtown Night Vale have been completed! We were all very sad when the shop closed down a few months ago, due to the many-tentacled and greatly fanged creature that somehow got into the stock room; so it is with great pleasure that I now say the holes in the walls have all been fixed, the blood spatter has all been cleaned up, and Aditya’s is open for business once more!_

_Whether you’re a watercolor novice, a photo album aficionado, or a voodoo doll enthusiast, you’re invited to attend the grand reopening later this evening. Aditya himself will be holding a vegetable printing workshop for guests of all ages. Free vegetables from the extended care unit at the Night Vale General Hospital will be given out at the door._

_Attendance to tonight’s event will also automatically enter your name in the art supplies raffle! The grand prize is a brand new Martha Stewart deluxe craft puncher, which, according to Aditya, can punch through up to_ twelve _layers of scrapbook paper, corrugated cardboard, vellum bristol, steel, or human flesh._

_It also comes with five interchangeable Special Holiday punch cartridges! Won’t those be handy? Get your names in that fishbowl, people!_

_And now, a look at our community calendar..._

\--

 

 _Next time,_ as it turns out, is the very next evening. It’s close to midnight, and Louis is just sitting down on his very un-plush, very un-velvety sofa for a late dinner—a lovely plate of microwaveable fish and chips—when his phone vibrates in his pocket. It’s an unknown number, but when he picks up he recognizes Carlos’ voice immediately.

“He was talking in his sleep, fretting about how he forgot to pray to the great warmth of the Smiling God, and then he screamed himself awake and now he won’t go _back_ to sleep,” Carlos sighs. “I’ve been trying some science-approved calming methods on him, including several benzodiazepines _and_ guided meditation with amethyst crystals, but so far none of them have worked.”

Louis looks down at the plate of fish and chips in his lap. It’s already congealing. “Have you tried the country music tape?” he asks, poking at a chip with his fork.

“The what?”

“One of the cassettes Cecil’s got...I played it for Zayn yesterday and, I dunno, he liked it, I think. Should be by the stereo.”

“That sounds promising. I’ll tell Cecil.” Carlos sounds grateful.

“Do, um...do you still need me to come over, then?” If his phone had a cord, Louis would probably be twirling it around his finger right now. But since it does not, he twirls his finger vaguely in the air instead, and then feels silly, and stops.

“What? Oh, of _course_ we need you!” Carlos pauses. “Unless you were in bed already, or you have other plans—I’m sorry, I should’ve asked that first.”

“Weeeell, I’m at a party at the moment, but...I _suppose_ I can leave,” Louis says casually as he walks over to the garbage can, lifts the lid with his foot, and drops his dinner into it as quietly as possible.

The country music tape is playing on low volume when Louis enters the apartment. The only light that’s turned on is in the kitchen, where Cecil is wearing a burgundy dressing-gown and making tea, while Carlos is sitting on the sofa, shining a penlight into Zayn’s eyes. A rumpled blanket is around Zayn’s knees and a pillow is tucked behind his back, and Louis realizes that means Zayn sleeps on the sofa. (Their beautiful, beautiful sofa.)

It’s simultaneously annoying and heartbreaking to see how pathetic Zayn looks at the moment—the way he always looks, to be frank, with those dark circles around his eyes and that small puffy mouth, and it kind of makes Louis want to strangle him. _If he keeps this up, Night Vale is going to eat him alive,_ part of Louis thinks; but then another part of him clears its throat politely and pipes up, _I don’t mean to be rude, but just to put my two cents in:_ not if you don’t let it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Carlos is asking, and Zayn is shaking his head and mumbling, “It’s fine, Carlos, really.”

“No, it’s bloody well _not.”_ Louis puts his hands on his hips, and Carlos and Zayn both turn to look at him over the back of the sofa. “This can’t go on, it’s _stupid.”_

“Louis,” Carlos says, shocked.

“Sorry, it’s just, we’re all tiptoeing around Zayn like he’s some kind of _freak,_ and okay, he does have kind of an asymmetrical face, you can see it if you tilt your head a little—“

“Thanks a lot,” Zayn mumbles.

“—But _I_ say, okay, you were at Strex. So what? You’re not anymore, so _get over it._ Fat lot of good any of _this_ is doing, it’s just, what d’you call it, enabling him. If we want him to act normal, we’ve got to treat him normal.” Louis huffs, taking a step forward and pointing a finger at Zayn. “So. Starting tomorrow, you’re not just tagging along with us to the station like some sad puppy. I’m going to put you to work. And not reorganizing any bloody inboxes either, I mean _real_ work. Intern stuff.” Louis glances sideways at Cecil, who gives him an encouraging wink. “And then after work, we are going to go out, and have _fun._ Seeing as you don’t know how to do that, I am going to teach you. Okay?”

Taking a deep breath, Zayn meets Louis’ eyes and slowly lets his breath out. “Okay.”

“Excellent. Now.” Grasping Zayn by his shoulders, Louis shoves him back down onto his pillow. Carlos ducks off the couch and scampers across the room, out of the way. “Go to _sleep.”_

“I _can’t,”_ Zayn insists, jackknifing up again and shoving Louis back—lightly, but Louis is still caught off-guard.

“Why not?” Louis snaps. “Miracle of modern upholstery Fed-Exed straight from heaven not squashy enough for that delicate arse of yours?”

“Yes! I mean _no,_ that’s not—I’m—I’m used to sleepin’ with my head on a _desk,_ all right?” Zayn scrunches his face up in what Louis assumes is an attempt at a scowl. (It’s not a very good one, but Louis is secretly endeared because he’s trying so hard.)

“Sleeping on a desk?”

“I’ve always slept with my head on a desk.” Zayn looks sheepishly at Carlos. “Sorry, I know I should’ve said, it’s just...you were bein’ so nice about giving me the sofa.”

Emerging from behind the safety of the standing lamp, Carlos rubs his temple and sighs. “Okay,” he says, looking from Zayn to Cecil to Louis. “Obviously we’ve all still got a lot to learn about each other. This isn’t going to be easy, but if you try to adjust to all of us, Zayn, we promise to try to adjust to you. How does that sound?”

A small smile spreads across Zayn’s face. “Sounds all right.”

Louis nods, clearing his throat. “Erm. Right, so, sleeping on a desk. Coffee table’s right there, you can sit on the floor, should do well enough. Anything else?”

Zayn shifts uncomfortably and adds, “For reinforcement of our training, they also used to play a recording of the StrexCorp employee handbook over the speakers at night, like...”

“To bore you to sleep?” Louis laughs a little.

“Nah. It was comforting, actually.” Zayn crumples and uncrumples the edge of the blanket in his hands. “Knowing it’d always be the same.”

“I hate to mention it, but if it helps...” Carlos rummages in a side drawer and comes up with a slightly crumpled, suspiciously stained paperback book, with a smiley face on the cover. In place of the eyes of the smiley face are StrexCorp logos. “I managed to salvage a copy during all the commotion; I thought it might be historically significant someday.”

“Oh, well, there you go then, Cecil can just read you the—“ Louis begins, but Cecil shakes his head sadly as he comes over.

“Sore throat—” he squeak-rasps, talking for the first time since Louis got here—“came out of nowhere,” and Louis winces. Where voices like Cecil’s are concerned, coughs and sore throats are a criminal offense. (Literally. Louis knows this because he filed a report with the Sheriff’s Secret Police for Cecil during flu season last year. _Don’t worry son, we’ll get that flu,_ the police officer on duty had said, adjusting his balaclava and expertly cocking his Nerf gun. _We’ll get that flu_ good.)

“What about tomorrow’s show?” Louis asks, looking up at his boss in concern.

Cecil takes a long draw from his steaming mug of tea, which has the words _World’s Best Community Radio Show Host_ on it in glow-in-the-dark print. “I can cancel,” he wheezes. “I’ve done it before. But for now...” He makes an apologetic gesture towards Louis.

Louis looks down at Zayn. Zayn pulls the blanket around him like a cape, slides off the sofa onto the carpet with a bump, and lays his head down on the glass top of the coffee table, doing a slow blink at him.

 _“One_ time,” Louis says, leaning back against the sofa and cracking open the handbook. “And just for a couple of minutes.” Cecil settles on the other end of the sofa, briefly reaching out to rub circles into the small of Zayn’s back, while Carlos sits down in the armchair opposite and quietly takes out a crossword.

The instant Louis looks down and sees the first page of the thing, he feels himself blanch (at least he thinks he does, he’s not entirely sure what the word _blanch_ means), and he’s afraid his jaw might start seizing up—but he sucks it up, clears his throat, and begins tentatively to read. “StrexCorp Synernists Inc. Employee Handbook. Copyright StrexCorp, all rights reserved. This handbook does not constitute an employment contract or binding policy and is subject to change at any time.” From his place on the floor, Zayn makes a tiny, happy sort of sighing sound—so Louis turns the page and continues, trying to make his voice as clear and even as possible. “Chapter One: You’re Hired—For Life! Now that you are part of the StrexCorp family, here are a couple of things you need to remember before getting started...”

Louis doesn’t remember falling asleep. The next thing he knows, he’s waking up to sunlight—and with that slightly gritty feeling of having fallen asleep somewhere you shouldn’t have, in non-pajama clothing and without having brushed your teeth or finding the bird skeleton you need for your dream journal entry. Louis’ first thought is that his hair is _awful_ in the morning, and he doesn’t want anyone to witness it, least of all his boss, and he can probably find something to gel it down with before someone sees, toothpaste if all else fails.

His second thought is _Zayn,_ and he sits up and peers down at the carpet.

Zayn is still asleep, the upper half of his body curled over the edge of the coffee table, his head pillowed on his arms. The blanket slipped off his back sometime during the night, and his shoulders are now sticking up around his neck, pulling his shirt up and leaving a strip of skin above his waist exposed. For a brief moment, Louis wonders idly what it would feel like to slip his arms around Zayn’s middle from behind—and then wonders _very_ intently about the current price of gas, and whether he should start putting some of his savings into stocks, and why daffodils are sometimes called daffadowndillys. Why _is_ that? How odd.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” a smooth baritone sings somewhere above Louis’ head, and he looks up to see Cecil smiling and offering him a mug and a plate of toast with butter and jam.

“You did a good job last night,” Cecil praises, tipping his head in indication of Zayn. “You have an excellent Radio Voice, Louis; I should call your mom and tell her to be proud of you. I see her in town sometimes, and she tells me it’s been a while since she’s done that.”

Scrubbing his forearm across his eyes, Louis squints at Cecil and holds his hands out for the mug and plate. Then he pauses. “What happened to your sore throat?” he asks.

Cecil pulls his glasses down from where they’re perched above his eyebrows and beams. “I took a Tylenol before bed, and now I’m all better! And just in time for our show later this evening. Ah, the magic of _science,”_ he enthuses, throwing his hands in the air in rapture and padding back into the kitchen at the ping of the toaster.

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation to seven-in-the-morning Louis, so he sips his coffee and takes giant contented bites out of his toast, watching the sun creep up the horizon outside the window. It’s seven-twenty-two-in-the-morning Louis who is the first to realize something is amiss.

“Hey, _Tylenols don’t cure sore throats,”_ Louis yells down the hall, but by then Cecil has already twirled into the bathroom, humming merrily, and shut the door.


End file.
